New Home Annual Estate Charges - David Wilson

GDB2222

BobT36 said:

silvercar said:

Olinda99 said:

there is no cap on these charges and they can escalate

the houses are called fleecehold for a reason

BobT36 said:

"They are struggling to sell homes now, so hoping they would be willing to do this to get a sale".

Good. If enough people stop buying these fleecehold boxes, they'll be forced to start being more reasonable. Councils, too. 
I HATE how you cannot just "buy" anything these days. Everything has to be some sort of "service" which you pay for forever. 

It's like paying two council taxes. ANOTHER bill to just keep going up and up and up while salaries don't. Personally I'd walk away and not want to support this out of principle, but it's up to you.

[Deleted User] said:

Pull out if they won't remove the fleecehold. It's a scam, you will get ripped off, and then need to find another mark to scam when you want to sell.

If you read the OP, you will see that this isn't a leasehold situation, so using "fleasehold" is misplaced.

These are homes on an estate that generally has some communal greenery and/ or unadopted road that needs to be maintained. 

Friends owned one of these (not sure of the builder) and all houses agreed to cover the cost of replacing the minimal amount of grass with artificial grass and dispense with gardening services, saved them ££££.

"Fleecehold" specifically refers to FREEHOLD houses that have  additional charges, along with less rights than even leasehold. 

I would want the developer to pass the management of the green space over to the homeowners, which is often the case.  Do you know of any cases where this has been done and the charges are unreasonable?

A lot of the older estates have no estate management charges, but often there’s no communal land to maintain. Is part of the issue that planners are now insisting that estates have communal land, whereas in the past the land was all divided into building plots, with nothing left over?

RHemmings

GDB2222 said:

BobT36 said:

silvercar said:

Olinda99 said:

there is no cap on these charges and they can escalate

the houses are called fleecehold for a reason

BobT36 said:

"They are struggling to sell homes now, so hoping they would be willing to do this to get a sale".

Good. If enough people stop buying these fleecehold boxes, they'll be forced to start being more reasonable. Councils, too. 
I HATE how you cannot just "buy" anything these days. Everything has to be some sort of "service" which you pay for forever. 

It's like paying two council taxes. ANOTHER bill to just keep going up and up and up while salaries don't. Personally I'd walk away and not want to support this out of principle, but it's up to you.

[Deleted User] said:

Pull out if they won't remove the fleecehold. It's a scam, you will get ripped off, and then need to find another mark to scam when you want to sell.

If you read the OP, you will see that this isn't a leasehold situation, so using "fleasehold" is misplaced.

These are homes on an estate that generally has some communal greenery and/ or unadopted road that needs to be maintained. 

Friends owned one of these (not sure of the builder) and all houses agreed to cover the cost of replacing the minimal amount of grass with artificial grass and dispense with gardening services, saved them ££££.

"Fleecehold" specifically refers to FREEHOLD houses that have  additional charges, along with less rights than even leasehold. 

I would want the developer to pass the management of the green space over to the homeowners, which is often the case.  Do you know of any cases where this has been done and the charges are unreasonable?

A lot of the older estates have no estate management charges, but often there’s no communal land to maintain. Is part of the issue that planners are now insisting that estates have communal land, whereas in the past the land was all divided into building plots, with nothing left over?

this is more or less what I've been thinking. With the tiny plots that modern houses seem to be on in many cases, then communal green spaces are important. And of course there have to be roads. Someone has to pay for these. If the roads are adopted by the council, then that solves that individual problem. Since the owners of the houses will be paying council tax, that's not unreasonable. It seems that roads need to be made to a certain standard for them to be adopted. Where roads don't meet that standard then they can stay unadopted for a very long time. I know of a reasonably newish development near me where the roads are adopted, but also a small unadopted road where the houses are quite old looking.